Originally published February 26 2006
Mercedes and BMW equip cars with night vision
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The companies hope to improve night driving with "night vision" dashboard monitors. BMW's system scans up to 984 feet in front of the car, while the Mercedes technology offers better resolution with a projection distance of 492 feet.
Driving at night down a dark and isolated stretch of road off the Autobahn, one could easily believe there isn't another soul within miles: The windshield view shows only a few yards of barren road lined with looming trees and dense shrubs.
But a quick glance at the monitor in the center of the dashboard reveals the brightly illuminated image of a man moving out from behind a bush on the side of the road, beyond the ambit of the headlights, where I would never have seen him.
During exclusive test drives near the carmakers' headquarters in Germany, Wired News experienced the night-drive systems firsthand in the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class and the BMW 7 Series.
I quickly learned how to use the two systems to ward off collision courses with the pedestrians, animals or objects that all too often make nighttime driving hazardous.
Indeed, helping to prevent thousands of deaths each year attributed directly or indirectly to night-driving hazards is the raison d'etre of the new night-vision systems, Mercedes and BMW say.
Download video footage of the Mercedes night vision in action.
But while Mercedes and BMW agree that night-vision systems can save lives, the two carmakers have diverging philosophies about how nighttime images should be displayed.
It uses a CMOS-based sensor to process the images using algorithms that detect the heat emitted by objects outside the car.
While barreling along at high speeds on the Autobahn, for example, I was able to make out the turns ahead before I could see them with the high beams.
The Mercedes technology uses a near-infrared camera to scan and process nighttime images and offers a better resolution compared to BMW's system.
"A far-infrared system depends on the heat radiated by an object, which can vary a great deal," said Juergen Seekircher, a Mercedes development engineer involved in the sensor technologies research.
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